Apple's first major iOS 7 update makes the operating system feel whole.

There were about six months between the ouster of Scott Forstall from Apple in late October of 2012 and the unveiling of iOS 7.0 in June of 2013. Jony Ive and his team redesigned the software from the ground up in that interval, a short amount of time given that pretty much everything in the operating system was overhauled and that it was being done under new management. The design was tweaked between that first beta in June and the final release in mid-September, but the biggest elements were locked in place in short order.

iOS 7.1's version number implies a much smaller update, but it has spent a considerable amount of time in development. Apple has issued five betas to developers since November of 2013, and almost every one of them has tweaked the user interface in small but significant ways. It feels like Apple has been taking its time with this one, weighing different options and attempting to address the harshest criticism of the new design without the deadline pressure that comes with a major release.

We've spent a few months with iOS 7.1 as it has progressed, and as usual we're here to pick through the minutiae so you don't have to. iOS 7.1 isn't a drastic change, but it brings enough new design elements, performance improvements, and additional stability to the platform that it might just win over the remaining iOS 6 holdouts.

Performance

Further Reading

iOS 7.1 doesn't improve benchmark scores relative to iOS 7, but it still introduces a small but significant change that will make all iOS devices feel much faster. The animation durations that we complained about in the original release have all been significantly shortened, and that by itself is enough to relieve much of iOS 7's sluggishness. Some of the slower iOS devices used these animations to mask application load times, but on faster hardware, the animations almost always took longer to complete than the app took to start up.

iOS 7.0.3 was a first step toward fixing this issue for people who knew which settings to tweak. Going into the Accessibility Options and toggling "reduce motion" originally just disabled the parallax effect used on the home screen and throughout the operating system, but version 7.0.3 also disabled the sweeping animations used to transition from app to app. In its place was a crossfade effect that was less flashy but demonstrably faster.

iOS 7.0.6 and iOS 7.1 on the iPhone 5. The faster animations make the OS feel zippier. Music credit: "Pinball Spring" by Kevin MacLeod.

iOS 7.0.6 and iOS 7.1 on a first-generation iPad mini. Notice both the faster animations and the revised, cleaner pinch-to-Home animation. Music credit: "Show Your Moves" by Kevin MacLeod.

iOS 7.1 solves this problem for people who don't tweak their devices' settings or for people who like the way the animations look but not how they feel. The "reduce motion" setting still kills these animations in iOS 7.1, but the change is now purely cosmetic and offers no performance benefit.

Otherwise, iOS 7.1 remains fluid and usable even on older Apple A5-based devices like the iPhone 4S, fifth-generation iPod Touch, and the original iPad Mini. There are some actions that consistently produce stutters or dropped frames, and you'll notice a big step up if you move from something with an A5 in it to something with an A7 in it. Still, the experience is significantly better than it is on the iPhone 4 (though even the iPhone 4 behaves better under iOS 7.1, as we've examined in this separate post).

Battery life

Note: these scores are not comparable to the scores in the iOS 7.0 review. The test has been modified since then.

In the move from iOS 6.1 to iOS 7.0, we observed a statistically significant drop in battery life—the iPhone 5 was the biggest loser, while everything else was down just a little bit. The move from iOS 7.0 to 7.1 doesn't make as much of a difference. Our Wi-Fi browsing test measured both small gains and small losses, but most of these scores are different by just two or three percent, which we'd consider to be within the margin of error.

The first-generation iPad mini is the only one to lose a significant amount of runtime in our test—it gets about 10 percent less life out of a single charge. We'll be running the test again to verify this particular data and will update this article if we see different results. In the meantime, it's probably safe to say that unless something is wrong with your hardware, you'll get about the same battery life out of iOS 7.1 that you got from 7.0.

Stability improvements

Apple's release notes say that iOS 7.1 fixes crashing problems for iPhone 5S users, the same crashes that the company commented on way back in January. It's rare for Apple to acknowledge these kinds of problems beforehand or to promise fixes ahead of time, so the company must be confident that the problem has been fixed.

What Apple doesn't mention is that similar crashes have also affected both the iPad Air and Retina iPad mini. The common factor here is the new 64-bit A7 chip, which on these three devices runs a 64-bit build of iOS and 64-bit versions of all of Apple's built-in apps (and a small-but-growing number of third-party ones). These 64-bit apps can be expected to consume around 20 or 30 percent more memory than their 32-bit counterparts, but the iPhone 5S and both 64-bit iPads both ship with the same 1GB of RAM that their predecessors did.

The results were predictable: crashes on both the iPhone 5S and the 64-bit iPads are almost always associated with low memory errors. Pulling the logs from any given 64-bit iOS 7.0 device reveals at least a few of these crashes—below is the error list from Senior Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson's iPhone 5S and a Retina iPad mini on loan from Apple. Both are running iOS 7.0.6.

Lee's log shows two low memory crashes in March, and the (intermittently used) iPad shows three since February 24. Anecdotal evidence from Twitter, the Apple Support Communities forums, and other sources suggest that some users are seeing even more frequent crashes than these. Here's the crash log from my own iPhone 5S, which has been running iOS 7.1 beta 5 since it came out at the beginning of February.

As if by magic, no crashes in 7.1.

Andrew Cunningham

Despite our best efforts to create a set of steps that would consistently crash 64-bit iPhones and iPads, we can't point to any one specific workflow as proof that things that crash in iOS 7.0 won't crash in 7.1. But 32-bit and 64-bit devices running the final build of iOS 7.1 and any of the later betas have been remarkably stable. Whatever it was that was causing newer iPhones and iPads to crash and reboot, Apple seems to have straightened it out in the last six months.

1. There is no way to play a single album. If you try to play an album, once it reaches the last track it just keeps going on to the next album by that artist. Sometime it also just chooses a songs at random to play. (i never keep my app set to shuffle)

You're playing an album from the "Artists" view, so it is continuing to play more songs by the artist you chose. If you play albums from the "Albums" view you don't get that behavior. "Albums" is under the "More" section (at the bottom).

IMHO, this is the correct behavior. If I go into the "Beatles" section and start the first song, then it should play through all the Beatles songs, not just the first album.

Ugh. Confusing navigation with selection.

So, if I want to play that album by Bad Religion with Atomic Garden in it, I need to go to the Artists view, find Bad Religion, find the Atomic Garden song, take note that the album is called "Generator", then switch over to the Albums view (under More), scroll through the Big Ass List, click on "Generator" then play it?

Isn't the approach in iTunes for Mac vastly superior - once I've found the album I click the play button on the album itself instead of the one on the song, then the album plays (and stops at the end)?

Also, I notice now that my albums are all in reverse chronological order. Why the hell would I want to listen to a band's entire release catalogue in reverse order??? I can see why you would want the most recent release at the top for navigation, but then it is completely incongruous to move from the end of this year's album to the album from two years ago then the one from five years back, then the EP containing half the songs from that album, then the album from six years ago.

It all stems from Apple improperly confusing navigation with play order. The shameful thing is that they have it right in iTunes, and that it was at least consistent in iOS 6.

2. If i tilt my phone even the slightest angle it immediately switches to the cover flow view and stays like that forever. Like I have to go out and buy a new phone.

I suspect this is a hardware problem, my 4S pretty much instantly switches between cover flow and list as I tilt back and fort.

My old 4S had this problem as well, but no other problems with the accelerometer. Maybe it is a hardware issue and Music / Cover Flow is just soooo demanding that it triggers it where every other app has no problem. It was a frustrating experience, both because the screen would get locked in Cover Flow (I had some luck sometimes forcing the Music app to quit, but sometimes had to restart the whole phone) and because IMHO the Cover Flow view is horrendously useless to me. I imagine there are those who know their albums by their covers, but I navigate by name far more efficiently, and name of artist at that.

Here's the fix for the shift key issue - why not actually display lower case letters when the shift key isn't pressed, and show upper case letters when it is?

Ack, who downvoted this? I would upvote you 100 times if I could. I just got a work ipad that is my first foray into ios after using Android for many years and the fact the keyboard always shows capitals drives me insane. I can never tell what case I'm typing in until I start typing.

The Phone preview got a lot worse. I would rather see who is calling, rather than just a lot of empty space.

The icon changes are fine.

1000+ this! I'm not pleased that the buttons got smaller. I would have much preferred that Apple had left well enough alone. The larger buttons were fine AND were more usable. Though at the end of the day I'll get used to it. But I absolutely HATE the fact that they got rid of full-screen caller ID photos and replaced it with a tiny circular thumbnail and a vast swath of empty gray space. Before it was at least an OPTION depending upon the size of your contact photo. But now that's been eliminated for no good reason. It's also hard to believe this glaring change wasn't even mentioned in the review.

Here's the fix for the shift key issue - why not actually display lower case letters when the shift key isn't pressed, and show upper case letters when it is?

Because the default is lower-case, in many situations, and most people are not used to finding the right key in a sea of lower-case letters.

Good point. We're used to physical keyboards that always have upper-case letters. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't change things and relearn our behaviour when there's a better way to do things.

But when you are typing on a real keyboard, you have physical feedback when you are holding down the shift key, plus physical familiarity with the qwerty layout. No such thing exists with a touchscreen keyboard.

The Honda Civic is not a "ludicrously expensive" car, and CarPlay is available in the 2014 models that feature the new DisplayAudio stereo, which is an EX model and above. The image you show for CarPlay is the 2014 Civic dashboard.

Here's the fix for the shift key issue - why not actually display lower case letters when the shift key isn't pressed, and show upper case letters when it is?

Because the default is lower-case, in many situations, and most people are not used to finding the right key in a sea of lower-case letters.

Are you serious?If i want to type a lower case "a", then clearly I know what the lower case "a" looks like. And since it's the same position as upper case "A", it's no trouble at all.

I fail to see how it would be more difficult to find the right key if the case of the keyboard changed contextually.

A hunt-and-peck typist may not really know where a capital 'A' is automatically, so the fact that a lower-case 'a' is in the same spot is not particularly helpful. If a typist's brain recognizes where to find 'F' because it is right of 'D' and below 'R' (where that might be a purely shape-based analysis that does not incorporate the actual meaning of the letters), then it's going to take a little longer to find the key that is right of 'd' and below 'r'.

Obviously, switching cases on shift is not the end of the world. I meant to be suggesting what was potentially Apple's rationale, not making a claim as to the definitively best user interface.

I'm not understanding the battery life difference between the 5 and the 5S. In the Ars original review of the 5S, also by Andrew Cunningham, it says that battery life is virtually identical and I believe other reviewers generally agreed. The test in this review shows a 100 minutes better life in the 5S for WiFi browsing or about 25% better.

I believe it's called planned obsoleteness, with a helping hand from Apple.

Yes, batteries wearing out over time is definitely an Apple-specific problem caused by malicious anti-consumer engineering. /s

If Apple wanted to obsolete their products faster, they wouldn't have released iOS 7.1 for iPad 2 and iPhone 4 at all. By all accounts it is extending the usable life of the products by making them more responsive.

My original post is not about changes due to 7.1. It is reporting a 25% difference in battery life for the 5S between Andrew's original review of the 5S (which says battery life to be the same as the 5) and this review. If that difference really exists, I'll upgrade to a 5S.

As someone with an original iPhone 4 that held out due to performance concerns, does this make it worth updating to 7.x? I noticed it's not even included on the battery life comparisons, which I didn't take as a good sign...

I would tentatively say yes. I updated my iPhone 4 to iOS 7.0 when it was initially released, and it was so slow that I downgraded back to 6.1.3 (while I had the chance).

I bit the bullet and installed 7.1 today based on Ars' review and other comments suggesting that performance on the iPhone 4 was much improved – and it definitely is. I would say overall 7.1 is still a tad slower than 6, but it's much faster than 7.0 was. Fast enough that even if I had the option of downgrading today, I don't think I would bother – whereas 7.0 was so bad I wanted to throw the phone against the wall.

However, I can't comment on battery life since I only just installed it today.

Another thing to consider is that 7.1 will likely be the last version of iOS to support the iPhone 4. When iOS 8 comes out and presumably drops support for the iPhone 4, Apple will also stop signing 7.1, meaning you won't be able to install it. So if you don't upgrade to 7.1 before then, you'll be stuck on 6 forever. If you want to get the most mileage out of your iPhone 4, then, you should install 7.1 now while you can.

Does anyone else notice a difference with the tap recognizing for seeking through a track when your device is locked and is playing music? I remember before this last update that it was quite annoying to actually seek while on that screen but it seems to be pretty easy to do so now.

OH YES!!!! They also disabled slide to open on the top third of the screen so you don't start to unlock the screen instead of scrolling through your song (as you intended). That was SO annoying!

Sorry if it's been asked in an earlier post since I'm too lazy to go through all of them. Have you tested the improvements made to Touch ID?

I usually didn't have any problem with it, but sometimes it wouldn't recognize my fingers, usually left thumb, five times in a row that I had to type the long password.

I've only used it some times today, and it seems it's working better. It missed my left thumb a couple of times, but usually made it the second time. I may be lucky, but I want to know whether they made some concrete improvements to it.

7.1 made a huge difference for me. It's working much better now than it was before.

Touch ID changed instantly from cranky and intermittent to spectacularly great as soon as I updated my 5S to 7.1. It's almost like a miracle. I've reprogrammed touch ID twice since I bought the phone in December - the phone suffered from the gradual reduction in finger recognition that I've seen others report. Even on good days maybe one out of five attempts failed.

Ever since I got the phone, Touch ID did not perform well with wet fingers (understandable) but still wouldn't work reliably for several minutes after I had dried my hands. After updating last night, Touch ID works perfectly unless my finger is detectably wet. If I did a reasonable job with a towel, it works instantly. I should mention that in the very dry winter air of the last couple of months some days my skin got very dry and Touch ID didn't work well in those conditions either. I'll see if that problem still exists. I'm very surprised about the improvement in recognizing fingers with different moisture levels. I had thought it was a limitation of the hardware, but someone has worked very hard on the software. Kudos for getting things right.

The music app is still awful, even broken, compared to iOS 6. It's really a pain in the ass to use.

In what sense is it "broken?"

I don't know if I'd call the overall app "broken," but there is one really annoying issue I have with it...

It used to be that if you went to Artists and selected an artist, you got an alphabetical list of all their songs. This made jumping to a specific song really quick if you started from the Artist level, since in all likelihood you have many fewer artists than you do songs (for instance, in my case, I have 806 songs by 99 artists). So if I wanted to listen to One In Seven by Soulive, it was much faster to go to Artists > Soulive > One In Seven than Songs > One In Seven.

Now, when you select an artist, you get a reverse chronological list of all of their albums and the songs on each one. Conceptually, this makes sense; in actual use, it's a nightmare. Why? Because now you have to know not only which album the song is on, but also when that album was released in relation to the artist's other albums in order to have an idea of where it is in the list.

In my case, I have 16 Soulive albums containing a total of 162 songs. To get to the same "One In Seven" as above, I now have to go to Artists > Soulive and scroll down through 13 albums and all of their songs to get to the album that the song appears on, since the albums are in reverse chronological order. There's no longer a way to just see a simple alphabetical list of all Soulive songs and jump to O.

It's the type of design that sounds good on paper, conceptually, but completely doesn't work in actual use. Even if you know the album to look for (and its release date), it's still slower to navigate since you lose the ability to jump to an item by letter with the right-hand vertical scrubber. But if you don't know, forget it.

When I updated my iPhone 4 to 7.1 from 7.0, the device was kicked out of the "trusted devices" list I had established for two-factor authentication for my AppleID.

Not a biggie for me, as I had multiple devices set AND had set SMS for my phone, but I can see some folk accidentally whacking their entire device list and having to find their backup code or otherwise scramble to regain control on the account.

When I updated my iPhone 4, most things were fine and there's a definite speed increase, but I am rather annoyed that my home screen background now had a black gradient at the top, which doesn't help legibility at all (it was fine before) and ruins what was previously a very nice wallpaper.

In general I have to admit, looking at pretty much all the purely aesthetic changes from iOS 7.0 to iOS 7.1, I find myself preferring the 7.0 versions... but I might be alone there.

Here's the fix for the shift key issue - why not actually display lower case letters when the shift key isn't pressed, and show upper case letters when it is?

Ack, who downvoted this? I would upvote you 100 times if I could. I just got a work ipad that is my first foray into ios after using Android for many years and the fact the keyboard always shows capitals drives me insane. I can never tell what case I'm typing in until I start typing.

Apple can't because this EXTREMELY INNOVATIVE idea is patented. The patent holder wants too much for the rights, and Apple can't come up with an alternative technology that is still a known human alphabet.

Moore's law is nearly dead, but the number of patents you need to make a device still keeps doubling every 18 months. Pretty soon, it'll take an entire galactic GNP to license a one-click mechanical pencil.

Here's the fix for the shift key issue - why not actually display lower case letters when the shift key isn't pressed, and show upper case letters when it is?

Because the default is lower-case, in many situations, and most people are not used to finding the right key in a sea of lower-case letters.

Are you serious?If i want to type a lower case "a", then clearly I know what the lower case "a" looks like. And since it's the same position as upper case "A", it's no trouble at all.

I fail to see how it would be more difficult to find the right key if the case of the keyboard changed contextually.

A hunt-and-peck typist may not really know where a capital 'A' is automatically, so the fact that a lower-case 'a' is in the same spot is not particularly helpful. If a typist's brain recognizes where to find 'F' because it is right of 'D' and below 'R' (where that might be a purely shape-based analysis that does not incorporate the actual meaning of the letters), then it's going to take a little longer to find the key that is right of 'd' and below 'r'.

Obviously, switching cases on shift is not the end of the world. I meant to be suggesting what was potentially Apple's rationale, not making a claim as to the definitively best user interface.

If I want to type "a", why should I have to press the key for "A"? A hunt and peck typer should be more comfortable looking for "a" when that's what they want to type.

Here's the fix for the shift key issue - why not actually display lower case letters when the shift key isn't pressed, and show upper case letters when it is?

Because the default is lower-case, in many situations, and most people are not used to finding the right key in a sea of lower-case letters.

Are you serious?If i want to type a lower case "a", then clearly I know what the lower case "a" looks like. And since it's the same position as upper case "A", it's no trouble at all.

I fail to see how it would be more difficult to find the right key if the case of the keyboard changed contextually.

A hunt-and-peck typist may not really know where a capital 'A' is automatically, so the fact that a lower-case 'a' is in the same spot is not particularly helpful. If a typist's brain recognizes where to find 'F' because it is right of 'D' and below 'R' (where that might be a purely shape-based analysis that does not incorporate the actual meaning of the letters), then it's going to take a little longer to find the key that is right of 'd' and below 'r'.

Obviously, switching cases on shift is not the end of the world. I meant to be suggesting what was potentially Apple's rationale, not making a claim as to the definitively best user interface.

If I want to type "a", why should I have to press the key for "A"? A hunt and peck typer should be more comfortable looking for "a" when that's what they want to type.

You're right. That would be utterly crazy if any device ever worked like that. Good thing iOS represents the first device that works like that. Think of how confusing the world would have been otherwise. /s

You're right. That would be utterly crazy if any device ever worked like that. Good thing iOS represents the first device that works like that. Think of how confusing the world would have been otherwise. /s

Haha, doesn't mean I like it one bit. Also doesn't mean everyone does, although I do not speak for everyone. But I think given a choice, at least a decent amount of people would share my opinion.

When in the calendar (iPhone), if you turn your iPhone to landscape view you'll get a kinda-sorta week view. Is this new?

{edit: for reference I'm on an iPhone 4S}

I still haven't figured out what the landscape view in iTunes is supposed to be accomplishing.

Honestly, I just leave the screen orientation lock on all the time, except for watching the occasional YouTube video. I have yet to find a way that landscape orientation is useful, otherwise. In fact, I find it just gets in the way when activated by accident.

(All the other times I use my phone in landscape are for apps, like games, that ignore the orientation lock and automatically go into landscape).

But 32-bit and 64-bit devices running the final build of iOS 7.1 and any of the later betas have been remarkably stable. Whatever it was that was causing newer iPhones and iPads to crash and reboot, Apple seems to have straightened it out in the last six months.

Lies. Safari remains an unstable POS on the iPad Air. All it takes is 5-30 minutes with four or so tabs. You already mentioned what causes it, it's the increased RAM requirements. iPad Air is broken by design and likely unfixable unless they make Safari run in 32bits. Buyers beware!

It could be the particular websites you're looking at that's causing the crashes.

Hardly. I'm still having the same problem with my iPad Air. 7.1 did not fix the constant app crashes. In Safari almost any website will crash it. Ars, Engadget, Amazon, Google, Facebook, ESPN, you name it, almost any website has and will crash the browser. And it's not just Safari. The Photos app crashes constantly in addition to several other Apple and 3rd party applications. I have tried restoring to factory settings and that didn't help either. There is something fundamentally wrong with iOS 7 and/or iPad Air. I did not have these problems with iOS 4, 5 or 6 on my iPad 1 or 3.

The fact that almost anything is crashing your apps makes me wonder if there is a hardware problem (perhaps faulty memory?). Maybe contact Apple support online and/or have a trip to an Apple store to demonstrate the problem. Make sure you have a backup first (obviously).

With any luck they'll simply replace the device if you can show that it's non-functional.

Oh yes, that is most certainly my next plan of action but it is concerning that so many people on the apple support forums are having this issue as well. My original hope was that 7.1 would fix it but perhaps it is a random hardware defect.

My iPhone was acting terribly, getting very hot, very bad battery life (but not officially overheating and shutting down). The Geniuses at the Apple Store ran diagnostics and assured me everything was ok with hardware, then recommended I wipe the phone and fresh install everything (i.e. not from backup). That went a long way to fixing many of the problems. You may very well have already done this but something to consider.

Also, with regard to the unlock screen "swipe to unlock", the whole screen is a live swipe zone. Users do not have to swipe over the "swipe to unlock" text to unlock the screen. Apple won't be turning that text into a button (like with the shutdown swipe), but they could make the text more prominent and perhaps update the text to ">>>>>swipe screen to unlock>>>>"

When in the calendar (iPhone), if you turn your iPhone to landscape view you'll get a kinda-sorta week view. Is this new?

{edit: for reference I'm on an iPhone 4S}

I still haven't figured out what the landscape view in iTunes is supposed to be accomplishing.

Honestly, I just leave the screen orientation lock on all the time, except for watching the occasional YouTube video. I have yet to find a way that landscape orientation is useful, otherwise. In fact, I find it just gets in the way when activated by accident.

(All the other times I use my phone in landscape are for apps, like games, that ignore the orientation lock and automatically go into landscape).

I prefer to type anything longer than a sentence in landscape mode. I hate when I accidentally trigger, or even worse, get stuck in, the music landscape mode.

You're right. That would be utterly crazy if any device ever worked like that. Good thing iOS represents the first device that works like that. Think of how confusing the world would have been otherwise. /s

Haha, doesn't mean I like it one bit. Also doesn't mean everyone does, although I do not speak for everyone. But I think given a choice, at least a decent amount of people would share my opinion.

I don't doubt that, actually. I was positing why Apple would have chosen to go the way it did, not claiming it's the only possible useful system. The few times I've used a keyboard that works like you described, I found the lower-case keyboard disorienting, as it throws off my brain's automatic understanding of how to quickly identify letters. But I bet I'd get used to it in like a week. But you know what I also got used to really fast? The way the shift key works in iOS.

One thing that really bugs me about every iOS update is that after updating, it automatically turns Bluetooth back on, on my iPhone. I don't even have any BT accessories so I always turn it off. Yet I always see it back on again after doing an update.

Just submitted feedback to Apple on that... hopefully they think that's a good idea. It's weird that every other setting is left alone except the BT one.

The music app is still awful, even broken, compared to iOS 6. It's really a pain in the ass to use.

I started a thread about some of the Music Player issues, and The New Yorker had a long commentary about the Music Player in September. I haven't been able to upgrade to 7.1 yet, but I guess Apple has no idea how to write a Music Player anymore.

On the bright side, my iPhone contract expired this week, and there's no chance that I will buy a new iPhone if Apple can't make its Music Player be a satisfactory iPod.

My iPhone was acting terribly, getting very hot, very bad battery life (but not officially overheating and shutting down). The Geniuses at the Apple Store ran diagnostics and assured me everything was ok with hardware, then recommended I wipe the phone and fresh install everything (i.e. not from backup). That went a long way to fixing many of the problems. You may very well have already done this but something to consider.

I had a problem with my mom's iPhone 5 just turning into a space heater whenever she's at work. The only thing that fixed it was to turn off Wifi. There's no friendly AP at her office, so the phone somehow goes apeshit trying to associate with the cosmic background radiation or something. I've done every other setting, even tried switching out for another iPhone 5, no dice. It doesn't just run the battery down to a few percent and save itself for emergency calls. It kills the battery to where you have to plug it in for half an hour to bring it back to life.

Maybe 7.1 is an improvement here, but I'm not inclined to try testing on my dear mum again. She hates the phone enough as is.

Eh so far pretty decent. It seems battery life on my 5S may be a bit worse, but it might be too soon to tell. I needed to reset the network settings a couple times to get cellular data flowing. Hopefully that was an unrelated carrier issue in my area and not a pattern.

Most of the changes made sense from a usability perspective, but then they removed contact photos from the caller ID when receiving a call? That sucks, and seems to directly contradict the other usability changes.

^^ This. Why replace the full screen contact photo with overlaid buttons with a posy little contact photo and a mostly blank screen. There is plenty of screen real-estate left to have a larger photo even if they wanted to keep the buttons distinct.

Here's the fix for the shift key issue - why not actually display lower case letters when the shift key isn't pressed, and show upper case letters when it is?

Because the default is lower-case, in many situations, and most people are not used to finding the right key in a sea of lower-case letters.

Are you serious?If i want to type a lower case "a", then clearly I know what the lower case "a" looks like. And since it's the same position as upper case "A", it's no trouble at all.

I fail to see how it would be more difficult to find the right key if the case of the keyboard changed contextually.

The problem is that people aren't looking up letters by searching for shapes depending on upper or lower case characters when typing. An "r" and an "R" look sufficiently different that you have to look for one of TWO things. A keyboard that is constantly morphing around under your fingers with all characters changing size and shape is just a moving target that should be avoided in UI-design for good reasons. It requires constant re-interpreting of what you see.

I use both Android and iOS daily and I by far prefer the letters staying as they are (especially since I type a lot of German which has uppercase letters every other word or so). When I hit the shift key with my eyes already aiming at the letter I want to type and WHAM!!! all letters change their size and shapes right under my fingers this causes my visual circuits to do a double-take every single time. Typing this way is much more exhausting. If Android had a setting to keep the fucking letters as they are I would enable it in a heartbeat. The constantly flashing keyboard is driving me nuts.

It's the same as with reading an endless scrolling webpage versus reading an ebook with actual pages: Just because the technology allows you to do things (like having letters morphing or a page with infinite length) things aren't automatically better this way. Keeping the visuals you're looking at as stable as possible under your eyes and fingers is more important than exploiting all possibilities the technology offers.

I think this a typical nerdism: Pages are an atavism from books, on a screen we can read a book as an endlessly scrolling sea of text, so let's do it! Nope, because with scrolling you're looking at a constantly moving page which is utterly exhausting after a while. Letters on a touchscreen can change their shape at will, so let's do it! Nope, because the same fucking letter now has two different shapes to look out for.

Just because it's possible does not mean it is a good idea to do it. I can understand why people think it's better when not really considering things, but some things really deserve some more consideration. (And the "scrolling versus paging" problem is one of the major reasons people hate reading long texts on computers without even knowing why.)

The little plus icon beside the number is silly. It suggests that you can type a plus for international numbers.

If you hold down the 0 it changes to a +. This works for international dialling for me in the UK.

I know that, but when you're doing international dialling, you want the + to be in front of the number. To me it seems perfectly logical to assume the little plus button in front of the number would make it into an international number. After all, holding down any numeral button doesn't change the number into a letter. Only the 0 button does this.

I think Apple could have done a lot better for the dialler screen. Why not enable the caret if you do a long press on the numbers, like when you are typing text? It's annoying to delete all the way back and retype the numbers again if you only missed a digit or two near the start.